Here and there

The parking lots always full, the patients are overweight, and nobody wants trouble

He was not from here; he was from there. New places made him apprehensive, but it seemed
friendly here. The sign outside the building read “Welcome to
the Medical Center Parking Ramp.”He’d never been
welcomed to a parking ramp before — a comforting start. The parking ramp was full. He joined the
circling cars, looking for vacant spaces. The cars here all had
vanity license plates; some of them were disquieting. He was wedged
between “STR ANG 1” and “2 BEE ZAR.”
Eventually he escaped, parked on the street, and walked to his
destination. It was hot for January — 58 degrees, according
to the bearded man in the dog-fur hat and heavy full-body-length
coat, in a car with the license “IM KRA Z2.” “Parking ramp was full,” he told
the receptionist. “It’s always full,” she
said. “Never any parking spaces.” “If it’s always full, then . . .
” She interrupted him: “Sign here,
please.” Where he came from, areas with “never
any parking spaces” were called “no-parking
zones.” It was obviously different here. He signed his name on
a form and sat down. The man in the long coat was next in line.
“Is it hot in here — or is it just me?” he asked. No one answered him. Apparently they don’t
comment on “hot issues” here. The waiting room’s television was
rehashing yesterday’s news. A mayor and the mayor’s
sidekick were holding up report cards showing that they had
urinated into jars, proving to the satisfaction of the local
newspaper that they had not had booze or dope since Tuesday.
Another politician followed and suggested that all public people
urinate in jars — as an example to others. Now, he worried; he’d been led to
believe that it was more sophisticated, more urban here — but back there, where he came
from, folks didn’t need an example of how to urinate into
jars. The television left the politicians and
jumped to a fat nurse decrying obesity in children. The story moved
to a grade school where a fat teacher called a group of children in
from their playground games to watch a film on proper exercise.
“So they know the value of staying active,” the teacher
explained, “we have a series of films scheduled.” He looked around, thinking to ask someone here questions,
but thought better of it when he saw that everyone was overweight
— 28 fat people in skinny chairs. When he turned back to the TV, his view was
blocked by a thin lady, just arrived. He couldn’t see the screen, but he heard a TV voice say,
“We’re addicted to oil; we must switch to corn.” Therein the fat problem, he reasoned —
they drink oil here! Where he came from, they used oil for heat and
lubrication. When the thin lady sat down next to him, he
decided to share his observation. He said it low enough so that
only she could hear. “No wonder everyone here is fat —
they’re obsessed with oil and eat no corn.” “A low-oil corn diet!” she said,
“I’ll give it a try.” And then, “It’s
my slacks, isn’t it? I asked my husband if they made my butt
look big, and he said no — as if he even looked or cared
about anything except his stupid sports, the sonofabitch!”
She ran from the room in tears. The
receptionist saw the whole affair and wrote something next to his
line — on the form. He was very uncomfortable now; he wanted out
of here.
“How much longer?” he asked the receptionist. “Can’t say,” she said,
“I’m offline. The network has been shut down to
increase response time.” He should have stayed quiet, but he wanted at
least one answer to the methods here. “Why,” he asked, “would you
want to increase response time? Seems you’d want to decrease it. And when
you shut down completely, you have by the act itself reduced response
time as much as it can be reduced. And . . . ” “Take a seat, sir! We don’t want
trouble here. And stop bothering the other patients!” She wrote
on his line. He sat down. It was a slow, protracted, small-town hour
before she called his name. “The doctor wants a
sample.” She gave him a jar. “I’m not a public person,”
he explained. She stared at him, “I’m getting a
little tired of your antics. We’re busy here. You know very well
I’m not talking about doing it here! Use the bathroom.” “Where is it?” he asked. “There!” she said, pointing with her eyes. And so he went home, away from the madness here, and ate some
corn, with a spoon.